"The average FBS player is 446 miles away from his hometown. Six of the first eight College Football Playoff teams currently have players below the FBS average: Clemson (263 miles), Michigan State (283 miles), Ohio State (367 miles), Alabama (381 miles; two CFP trips) and Florida State (403 miles). The CFP outliers are Oklahoma (515 miles) and Oregon (1,047 miles)."

A bit dated (August 2014), but still an interesting compilation of facts and opinions about college football. Notably, on "The Champs" map (#6), Arkansas is credited with having won a national championship.

Well yeah I agree, but even though Texas has more HS players than any state in the country, it seems like Florida produces more FBS players. Still, we don't need them all, we just need a few and while our better battle is in Texas, we would be remiss to not spend time in Florida/the southeast as well.

Miami is pretty much no-man's land in that there are very few programs close by. Recruits are going to have to fly to go anywhere outside of Florida so proximity is less of a factor. The problem of course is that everyone is there recruiting. It's worth having a recruiter on staff with ties to the area so we can get a foot in the door, but a mistake I think to try and build our program on Florida recruits. Houston is very similar to Miami in that there's nothing south of them and only a handful of programs within driving distance.

Another thing to consider is that the focus of the OP was top producing High Schools. I think you can also consider that talent in Texas is more distributed due to the intense support for HS football in Texas. Florida and Texas both produce high numbers of bluechip talent overall, but we are closer to Texas, draw a large number of students from there in general, and send a lot of our alumni there.

Miami is pretty much no-man's land in that there are very few programs close by. Recruits are going to have to fly to go anywhere outside of Florida so proximity is less of a factor. The problem of course is that everyone is there recruiting. It's worth having a recruiter on staff with ties to the area so we can get a foot in the door, but a mistake I think to try and build our program on Florida recruits.

I agree, you can't build your program on Florida recruits. That just isn't realistic. What we need is for Morris to come in and find a way to "do more with less" initially and get us back to winning more than we lose. As that happens, continue recruiting Arkansas and the border states hard for the best that we can land to fill out 75% of our 25 man allotment (20 players) and then carefully use those other 5 scholarships to reach out to true top end difference makers from outside our bordering states, whether that is Georgia, Alabama, Florida, California or from other HS's and JC's outside our bordering states. The more we win, the more we will become a household name among HS and college football circles, the more interest we will gain from recruits outside our regional area. But make no mistake, Morris has to find a way to win more than he loses and in the process, should he lose, not get blown out. That's how you begin to change the existing paradigm.

A bit dated (August 2014), but still an interesting compilation of facts and opinions about college football. Notably, on "The Champs" map (#6), Arkansas is credited with having won a national championship.

Although the median distance was 192 miles, it looks like 75% are from within 500 miles. And for those in the Southeast, they stay a bit closer to home with about 80% within 500 miles. Seems more reasonable to me to look at the 80% distance instead of the median (always have been an 80/20 guy). The 80% radius looks much more appealing. That brings in practically the whole states of: Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Iowa, Kansas, and Illinois. Partial states include the northwest half of Alabama including Birmingham, the western two-thirds of Tennessee through Chattanooga, Louisville KY, Indianapolis IN, all major cities of Nebraska but one (at least on my map), and Texas including past Houston, Austin, Lubbock, and Amarillo.

Although the median distance was 192 miles, it looks like 75% are from within 500 miles. And for those in the Southeast, they stay a bit closer to home with about 80% within 500 miles. Seems more reasonable to me to look at the 80% distance instead of the median (always have been an 80/20 guy). The 80% radius looks much more appealing. That brings in practically the whole states of: Louisiana, Mississippi, Missouri, Oklahoma, Iowa, Kansas, and Illinois. Partial states include the northwest half of Alabama including Birmingham, the western two-thirds of Tennessee through Chattanooga, Louisville KY, Indianapolis IN, all major cities of Nebraska but one (at least on my map), and Texas including past Houston, Austin, Lubbock, and Amarillo.

I think that if we drilled down into every recruiting class of every major P-5 school over the last 10 years we would find that some have one radius for recruiting and still others have a different radius because of their history in recruiting. Alabama doesn't have to go far to recruit most of their quality athletes because of their central location to where many of the top football athletes in the country are located. Still, they retain several scholarship offers to reach out to kids across the country that they want and these offers may extend as far as 500 to over 4000 miles. But these are the select few and the very exceptional athletes that they literally view as the "can't miss" recruits.

We are not on that level at this point so we need to make our hay within a 250-500 mile radius of our campus and make the most of those who we land. If we find success with that in terms of wins, we will be able to branch out and take greater risks with players from further away. Until then we need to make the most of the kids that we can land from bordering states (all the way to Corpus Christi if necessary) to win now and then build our recruiting program.

I really like this thread, but I take the information with a grain of salt. Truthfully look at it like this. The Mississippi schools cast their net over much of the same recruiting radius that Bama does. And their has been a clear difference in the talent level for decades upon decades. Also one must point out that a large portion LSU's radius has it's recruiting talent coming from the ocean south of New Orleans. And yet they still don't seem to be lacking much year in and year out.

I really like this thread, but I take the information with a grain of salt. Truthfully look at it like this. The Mississippi schools cast their net over much of the same recruiting radius that Bama does. And their has been a clear difference in the talent level for decades upon decades. Also one must point out that a large portion LSU's radius has it's recruiting talent coming from the ocean south of New Orleans. And yet they still don't seem to be lacking much year in and year out.

Bama historically cheats better than the Mississippi schools for recruits.

good info. look at what happens if we can cast that net from 192 to 280 tho. For the Hogs, that 280-mile radius is the key. Then we get St Louis, Dallas, Memphis, KC, OKC, Tulsa, LR , witchita, and shreveport .

FYI, if the Hogs wanted to absolutely own DFW (4th largest MDA in the US), they could (yes, even over UT & A&M)...

Honestly, "owning DFW" is kind of a tall order. There are lots of well regarded teams that recruit that area heavily who have had a lot more success on a consistent basis in the Win column, than we have had over the last ten years.

Texas is likely on the rise again, though we will see. If they regain anything close to their previous stature in terms of wins, a lot of Texas kids are going to opt for them. Then there is Oklahoma and they are always going to do well in Texas and especially in Dallas. TCU isn't to be ignored, A&M is always going to get a lot of good, quality Texas kids and then Oklahoma State has built good recruiting classes out of Texas and have accomplished quite a lot with them.

Then there are the schools of greater notoriety from across the nation who come in and cherry pick highly rated athletes.

So to "own" the DFW area Arkansas is first going to have to win a lot more games and in the process, be a team that makes an impact in the highly regarded SEC West. Yes, do that and then the Hogs can start making greater inroads into the DFW recruiting base and with consistent winning at higher levels, they might come close to sharing a bigger piece of the DFW recruiting area. But "own it"? I doubt we ever see that day short of becoming the next Alabama.

"The average FBS player is 446 miles away from his hometown. Six of the first eight College Football Playoff teams currently have players below the FBS average: Clemson (263 miles), Michigan State (283 miles), Ohio State (367 miles), Alabama (381 miles; two CFP trips) and Florida State (403 miles). The CFP outliers are Oklahoma (515 miles) and Oregon (1,047 miles)."

Averages aren't very useful unless you have a pretty balanced distribution. Take somebody like Sam-Irwin Hill (hometown in Australia) or Hjalte Froholdt (Denmark iirc).

With a 100 person roster, you could have 80 people from within 200 miles, 10 within 500 miles, 8 within 1000 miles, and 2 outside of that range. That could give you a median value of say 185 miles, but perhaps an average value of 400 miles.

The median gives you a value much more representative of the data there than the average. I mean, you pick 10 names out of a hat, at least 8 will likely be less than the average, probably 9 and a decent odds of all 10.